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jurassic park

About two weeks ago I shared my IKEA Rast makeover which turned out to be more of a make’eh’.

I had problems with the staining and I couldn’t afford cool knobs so I sort of just left it in the ‘progress’ stage. This past weekend while I was shopping for my front door makeover job I wandered into the hardware aisle. Low and behold I found knobs that I liked! Okay, so I don’t love them but I like them and for a cheap nightstand that is good enough for me. Especially since they were only $1.58 each after tax.

Unfortunantly, it wasn’t as easy as just switching out the knobs. When I took the wooden knobs off they left this ring:

LAME. Whatevs, I am over this dresser. I put on Jurassic Park and did a quick sand and repainting of the drawer fronts. It didn’t take that long and dinosaurs calm me down 🙂

I like the way the knobs look and it definitely looks more finished now. I’ve decided not to worry about re-staining it because I just don’t care enough and it doesn’t show that much. But I did do one other little thing to add personality to this piece…

Yay, happy polka dot lining! I’ve had this roll of red and white polka dot wrapping paper for about a year. I got in the dollar section at Target and I have seriously wrapped thirteen presents in it and it has still not run out… it is like the never ending roll of wrapping paper… (ironically I’ve wrapped a lot of Hanukkah presents with it so it’s apropos). All I did was measure and cut out the paper and then I used scotch tape rolls all over the back. I don’t know how long it will hold up but it looks really happy and I can easily replace it at any time.

That is definitely more than I wanted to spend but it is a solid little dresser and I really like having all my stuff hidden in drawers, plus I could potentially use that stain on other projects (if I ever attempt staining again).

I did it! This has been on my list of things to do for so long, but honestly I’ve been very nervous to do it. As I mentioned in this post, when I first moved in I had the three main light fixtures that came with the house changed (entry, dining, kitchen). The other big one that I wanted to change out was my bedroom. I had my cousin do the three lighting fixtures when I first moved in but I’m all about boundary pushing these days so I knew I wanted to do this one myself. The fixture that was in my bedroom was unobtrusive but that isn’t really my style. Six months ago I got the Knappa light from IKEA to hang in there, I assembled it and then left it hanging off a chair in the second bedroom this whole time. I told you I was nervous to do it on my own… but today I mustered all the courage I had plus a lot of internet research and youtube videos.

I’m not going to lie, I did run into a few problems because the light fixture I chose didn’t come with a canopy (that round cap that connects the cord to the ceiling) and because my house is so old it was just all kinds of gross up there. But this post is in no way a ‘how-to’ it’s more of a ‘don’t follow my directions just be inspired that I did it and so can you’ post.

Let’s skip all the boring sweaty parts and just skip to my favorite part, no it’s not the finished product, it was shutting off the power at the electrical box. Why was this my favorite part? Because I felt like Laura Dern in Jurassic Park… it was awesome! Remember the scene where she is going through that dark underground compound trying to find the power box? And then she flips all those big switches to save everyone from death by dinosaurs? It was kind of like that except no dinosaurs or dismembered arms.